Abstract
Over the last several decades, neoliberalism has been presented as a necessary and inevitable outcome of globalization and, therefore, has shaped social, economic, and educational policies. However, neoliberalism or free-market capitalism neither achieves the economic and social benefits claimed for it nor functions as a self-regulating system. Instead, neoliberalism, as the current global recession makes abundantly clear, has devastated global economies and wrecked havoc on the environment. Therefore, I will argue the following:
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Over the last several decades, beginning with Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States, politicians, and the corporate and media elite have hijacked the process of globalization (the shrinkage of space and time) to promote neoliberalism as the only way in which the world can be organized. Neoliberalism promises to increase economic growth and reduce poverty and inequality. Consequently, neoliberalism, with its emphasis on privatization, deregulation, competition, and the dismantling of welfare and education programs except in the service of capital, has come to dominate the decision-making process.
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Education, from preschool through the post-secondary level, is increasingly reshaped into competitive markets where students are to be assessed via standardized tests with the goal of creating entrepreneurial individuals who will be economically productive members of society, responsible only for her or him self. Neoliberal societies aim to create instrumentally rational individuals who can compete in the marketplace (Peters 1994)
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However, neoliberalism in practice differs from neoliberals’ theoretical assertions. Instead, writes Harvey (2005), neoliberalism is
a benevolent mask of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, [that] hide the grim realities of the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power, locally as well as transnationally, but more particularly in the main financial centers of global capitalism. (Harvey 2005, 119)
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© 2012 Ravi Kumar
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Hursh, D. (2012). Rethinking Schools and Society/ Combating Neoliberal Globalization. In: Kumar, R. (eds) Education and the Reproduction of Capital. Marxism and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137007582_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137007582_5
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